damn freshmen

Damn, for all that's happened during my short-term hiatus, you would've thought I'd want to take advantage of the wealth of ideas and spawn some diary entries, or something. Sadly, I had to uphold the freshman tradition and remain the little bundle of inconsistencies that I am. I'm sure everyone's pillows are soaked with tears from the void that formed in the result of my absence.

So yeah, I have a severe distaste of backtracking, so the highlights of my hiatus will be sparse. In fact, there won't be any.

Before executing the onslaught of rambling that's included with today's events, the following is an excerpt from my alternate diary regarding my band teacher to serve as some vague background information:

I think when a boy is named Clayton, that boy has an automatic standard to live up to. If he doesn't have his head shoved up his ass as far as humanly possible by the time he reaches puberty, he's instantly a failure within the undeclared cult of those named Clayton.

My first period class just happens to be band, and, even more coincidentally, I'm sure, my band director's name is Clayton Browne.

I'm sure his mother added an E at the end of 'Browne' just to spite everyone who ever scoffed over the fact that 'Brown' is a pathetically simple last name to spell. There just has to be some technicality that is frequently overlooked solely for the purpose of pissing others off.

Mr. Browne has sufficiently appeased the cult of Clayton. Students in band really don't realize what a bastard he is until he singles one of them out and takes it upon himself to embarrass that person in front of their peers.

The man spent ten godforsaken minutes reviewing the rhythm of one measure with one student, who will probably forever maul himself with various inanimate objects for spurring Mr. Browne's meticulous wrath. As this played out, I sat in a nearby chair with my head lolled off to the side and my mouth gaping open, hoping I could get a trail of drool to drape from my bottom lip to my lap to complete the ensemble. Mr. Browne claims that forcing students to piece the puzzle together themselves aids in the joyous journey of learning, and sure, I'll give him that. But when you embarrass the living fuck out of a disheveled student unaware of the blow being dealt to him, all you have there is some quivering freshman ready to wet his pants. There's no learning there, just frantic guessing to quickly draw attention away from whoever the floodlight has been shone upon.

When the bell rang signaling the beginning of first period, Mr. Browne began lecturing on the importance of striving to learn new things in band each day, since people apparently tend to think that there's nothing new to learn once they've mastered the basics of their chosen instrument. In keeping with that theme, today in band I learned that it takes much more saliva than one would think to make threads of drool.

As everyone was disassembling their instruments at the end of class and stuffing the various parts back into their gaudy black cases, Mr. Browne told us a story about his experiences with ice skating and how he completely severed the bone in his ankle. He used sickening imagery to illustrate the way his foot remained still when he attempted to move his knee from side to side, and I laughed at his pain, the ass.

During third period biology, Mr. Dockin accidentally made an error in his arithmetic when he was calculating the odds of someone having two identical sex cells, and within seconds the entire class was in an uproar deriding over the fact that he had made such a careless mistake. And that, my children, is when the 27-year-old volleyball coach exploded, much like a grape in a microwave. Once Dockin's rage regarding the lack of respect had calmed, he began muttering that he wished the seniors would beat the 'thug freshmen' circulating around campus into a bloody pulp, then initiated a series of stories illustrating his encounters with such freshmen. As legend has it, some rebellious freshman was in one of the study halls Dockin oversaw a few years ago, and he was sent to the office when he refused to comply with the entire 'quiet' aspect of 'quiet study.' However, he gimped in the opposite direction of the office, and Dockin thus followed him. The freshman ended up spitting in Dockin's face, smack between his eyebrows and narrowly missing the mucus membranes of his eyes, which could have potentially diseased/killed him had the delinquent been afflicted AIDS. I always considered it to be self-evident that you do not piss of a man who is 6'4", but hey, such is the consequence of smoking your brain into a puddle of chilly goo. Obviously, being spit upon by an insolent freshman shoved Dockin over the edge, so as a result he 'grabbed his shoulders and gently nudged him against the wall, much like he would walk into one, except more forcefully than he might've planned.' Even so, as funny and intelligent as Mr. Dockin is, I didn't appreciate his assumption that freshmen believe they're all-knowing and whatnot. I always agreed with the idea that 'true wisdom is understanding that you know nothing,' or something to that effect. I think an overwhelming percentage of freshmen realize that they don't even come close to knowing everything. However, they do believe that they witness and comprehend everything that occurs within their self-constructed universes.

I don't see what the point in living is if we know everything.

But anyway, when the school day ended around 2:25 p.m. this afternoon, I approached my Japanese teacher and provided her with a list of all of the 'classroom inappropriate' words in the English language that Pat, Nick and I could muster. It obviously frustrates her when people make use of such language in class and she doesn't understand what they're saying, and she requested that we inform her of anyone using the aforementioned vocabulary. To simplify things, I figured giving her a list she could refer to would enable her to recognize the words in the future and punish students accordingly. At first when I passed her the list, her face was crinkled in confusion, but when she realized what it was I had done, she busted up laughing and took the note from me, thanking me a few times as I left.

You haven't felt true faith in the success of humanity until you've seen a Japanese citizen profusely distraught and laughing simultaneously. You can easily measure their level of confusion judging by how much they're squinting or leaning forward to examine you curiously. You'll know what I mean when you see for yourself.